Entries from March 2008 ↓

Congratulations to Kenny Gamble and Leon Huff of Gamble & Huff, for their induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame last night.

The architects of the so-called “Philly Sound,” the duo, as songwriters, arrangers, and producers, were responsible for such hits as the O’Jays’ “Backstabbers”and “Love Train,” Harold Melvin & the Blue Notes’ “If You Don’t Know Me By Now,” and a list as long as you are tall of everything you and your parents love in ’70s soul music.

I’ve met Kenny Gamble, and hosted him on a producer’s panel at the VIBE Music Seminar, about 10 years ago, where we listened to and discussed the O’Jays’ “For The Love of Money”; still, in my opinion, one of the greatest record productions ever; almost hallucinogenic in its intensity.

For your morning commute, consider one the most lovely records to come out of the Philly Sound: The Three Degrees’s “When Will I See You Again,” presented both in a live version, and a kinda strange/yet still kinda cool German TV lip sync version.

The almost certainly pseudonymous Winston Rowntree is my new favorite comic strip artist in the world, just based on these two pieces from his ongoing Subnormality series: an explanation of how wack bands top the charts, and a quick guide on how to choose when picking air fresheners for your car.

I’m almost religiously unmoved by political advertising, which, I’m sure like, many, I usually find boring beyond rote; usually no more than talking points with pictures.

However, when I saw this 2006 campaign ad during Eliot Spitzer’s run for governor of New York State, it almost took my breath away.

Continue reading →

Oh, for the good old days, when the only pot shots Barack Obama had to worry about were people criticizing him for sucking down a few sticks of Chocolate Thai…brilliant stuff from Michael Stevens, the brain behind CamPain 2008.

Hey: What is Barack Obama’s drug policy, anyway?

This Skittles “Midas Touch” commercial is a thing of perverse beauty, but you’ve gotta watch the 45-second version, here, with the brief monologue in the center, to glom the true art of it.

Pablo Escobar (1949-1993), Medellín Cartel mastermind, the most notorious drug kingpin in history, and inspiration to an entire generation of rappers…had a soft spot for hippopotamuses.

Please: Would someone just shoot me?

According to this article in Animation Magazine, Tyler Perry is in discussions to do—help me—a Madea cartoon series:

Perry’s yet untitled project will follow his character Madea on her comedic trials and tribulations, and will teach “children about family values, in a way that only Madea could!” “After receiving thousands of letters from parents telling me how much their kids love Madea and realizing that a lot of the plays were not kid friendly,” says Perry, “I wanted to do something more appropriate and this seems to be it. A ‘Madea’ animation looks like the best way.”

Actually, the really best way would be for people to stop watching movies and plays with Madea in them, no?

Wow: Can you believe anything anybody writes any more?

The New York Times is still reeling after their gut-felt rave over the book Love and Consequences, and loving profile of its author, Margaret B. Jones. Love and… is Jones’ memoir of her life as a scrappy, foster white girl, growing up wild with the Bloods in the streets of South Central LA.

Meanwhile, Consequences are what her behind, the Times, and he publisher, Riverhead/Penguin, are feeling right this instant.

We now know that “Margaret B. Jones” is actually—get this—Margaret Seltzer. (Wow…does it get any whiter?) Instead of being dragged through inummerable foster homes, Seltzer was raised by both parents in the well-heeled San Fernando Valley. As opposed to ducking in and out of violent, drug-infested Compton alleyways, she spent her teen years ducking in and out of private Episcopal school hallways. Instead of gangs, she had her hair in bangs…o.k., I’m going too far, now, but you get the point: She made up the whole 296 pages.

But did a group of eminent medical researchers, including a Nobel Prize-winner, just get caught doing the same thing?

Continue reading →

Above: A finalist in the “Unintentionally Hilarious New York Times Headlines” category, awarded by MEDIA ASSASSIN, for a Wednesday piece about, of all things, small children…and television.

But, O.K. Let’s say they missed the last 300-plus years of slang. Didn’t anyone at the Times copy desk ever see the “Johnson! Pecker!” sequence, below, from Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me?

Peter Eisenman does not cheer at football games.

Peter Eisenman is a hardcore football fan. (The Wall Street Journal called him “an unrepentant sports nut.”) He has been buying season tickets to NY Giants games for a half-century.

He doesn’t cheer at them.

A month ago, he had what most sports fans could have only described as an out-of-body experience: He went and saw his favorite pro football team—50 years running—win one of the most amazing championship victories in sports history—Super Bowl XLII, his first.

He didn’t cheer.

But even more, of the 60,000 people who saw the event live, Peter Eisenman was the only person sitting in University of Phoenix Stadium, pictured above, who, while watching those men do battle, could look out at the retractable roof; its roll-in natural grass field; the completely unobstructed seating; and the massive supercolumns supporting the whole structure, say two little words, and be telling the truth.

“My baby.”

Peter Eisenman, of Eisenman Architects, designed University of Phoenix Stadium. Peter Eisenman watched his first live Super Bowl as it was won with feats of superhuman cunning and strength by a team he’s loved all of his adult life in a massive stadium people are raving about but that he remembers when it weighed less than a paper clip, when it was nothing but a pattern of neurons firing in his formidable brain.

And he still didn’t cheer.

He’s either the coolest or the most tightly-wound person ever made. Me? If I’d held all that passion, history, talent, and juice inside me, after Plaxico Burress’s game-ending catch, I’d have let out a Cuba-Gooding-Jr.-winning-best-supporting-actor-at-the-Academy-Awards style war cry squared, run out onto the field naked, and set myself on fire. But I guess that’s why I’m not Peter Eisenman.

That I’m not Peter Eisenman is also why I didn’t spend Super Bowl Sunday seated next to the smart, slender, friendly, and blonde Cynthia Davidson. The person who knows that Eisenman doesn’t scream over great plays (“We high-five! He yells when he’s angry, not when he’s happy”) knows an awful lot more about him, enough to fill a book. So she did one.

I’m talking with Cynthia about that book tomorrow, Friday, March 7, at 2 pm ET, on NONFICTION, my weekly WBAI-NY / 99.5 FM radio show, broadcasting terrestrially in the NYC tri-state, and streaming live here. The book’s called Tracing Eisenman: Peter Eisenman Complete Works (Thames & Hudson). It details Eisenman’s history and ouevre as only someone who knows him well, understands his intent, but who was an architectural critic and theorist before she met him, might do. Cynthia is cofounder of the nonprofit Anyone Corporation, and editor on a dozen books for MIT Press’s Writing Architecture series. As well, she publishes Log, an architectural journal.

Continue reading →